10 Alternative Android Keyboard Apps

For most users, their device’s built-in keyboard app is good enough but aside from autocorrection, stock keyboards have little to no extra features. This is where alternative keyboard apps can come in to fill in the gap. We have here 10 Android keyboards that will make you drop your original soft keyboard in a heartbeat.

If your fingers are too large to tap on the right letters, some of these apps let you swipe for better accuracy. Others learn the way you use words and can even predict your next letter based on your favorite words. A fan of customization? We have apps that let you personalize the look of your keyboard, the background or even the QWERTY layout.

If any of these features interest you, here are 10 Android keyboard apps – some free, some paid apps with free trials – you should check out.

SwiftKey Keyboard has advanced text-predicting capabilities, which learn and adapt to the way you type. It learns from the way you type on your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo, SMS and blog to improve its predictions. You can also use its swipe input to type entire sentences in one motion by gliding over the space bar in between words.

Swype keyboard is the original swipe input keyboard. Swype has features such as Living Language, which updates your dictionary with the latest trending words. Like SwiftKey, it features next word prediction and adapts to the way you swipe. Swype also allows you to perform quick tasks such as Select All, Cut, Copy and Paste by simply swiping on the keyboard.

TouchPal X offers both tap and swipe input. It also has a feature called TouchPal Wave, which allows you to write a complete sentence in seconds by simply dragging the first word down to the spacebar and then swiping between the suggested words that appear over the keys. It can also integrate with Twitter, so you can tweet directly from the app, and has support for Emoji.

A.I.type Keyboard Plus features comprehensive text prediction and correction abilities. It suggests, completes and corrects words based on what you’re typing. It can also correct your input so you don’t have to worry about typing precisely. In addition, A.I.type Keyboard Plus allows you to customize your keyboard by changing the colors, fonts, themes and background image.

MessagEase changes the way you type using a tap-and-slide interface. The most common letters are strategically placed on 9 large keys; the other letters are activated with slides. A game is provided to help you adapt to the keyboard faster. MessagEase Keyboard also features gestures for basic operations such as Select All, Copy, Cut and Paste to let you type more words in less time.

MessagEase claims to be language independent, and supports 18 different keyboard layouts. [Free]

Siine Shortcut Keyboard is a shortcut keyboard. You can set up shortcuts for commonly used greetings or phrases. It also features built-in clock and calendar views that let you very quickly input text related to dates and times. You can also create custom emoticons and use them quickly using emoticon shortcuts.

Perfect Keyboard Pro aims to provide a fully customizable keyboard. It allows you to change the colors of the keyboard buttons, background, text and even word suggestion font. You can even customize the layout of the keyboard itself, the intensity of the haptic feedback as well as the style and volume of the keypress sounds.

GO Keyboard is a multi-touch keyboard that supports swipe input. In addition, GO Keyboard learns and corrects you as you type, and features next word prediction on top of Emoji support. One of the best aspects of GO Keyboard is the theme support. There are more than 60 themes currently available for GO Keyboard, with more added weekly.

Clean and minimalistic, Adaptxt Keyboard has three different auto correction modes, plus a TextExpander-like feature and a Share Key that allows you to post directly to your social accounts. It also features a swipe input option and even a classic T9 phone keyboard option. The premium version ($0.99) allows further customization of the keyboard.

Adaptxt Keyboard supports 81 languages, and up to 5 dictionaries can be enabled at once. [Free]

Kii Keyboard is the keyboard to beat. With support for alternate layouts such as Compact QWERTY, T9, Dvorak, Azerty and Colemak, Kii also features numbers in an extended top row. The keyboard supports GO Keyboard themes, Better Keyboard themes, and CyanogenMod10 themes. You can also customize the font, colors and background image of the keyboard yourself.

We're Social

Our Partners

Disclaimer: The editor(s) reserve the right to edit any comments that are found to be abusive, offensive, contain profanity, serves as spam, is largely self-promotional, or displaying attempts to harbour irrelevant text links for any purpose.